Recently SciFi Mafia had the opportunity to talk with the lovely Seychelle Gabriel, whom we get to watch on Sundays in TNT’s post-alien-invasion series Falling Skies. We talked a bit about the new season of Falling Skies as well as her voice work on Legend of Korra, and her new experiences with sci-fi fans.

We began with Falling Skies. She plays Lourdes, a pre-med student who assists Dr. Anne Glass, played by Moon Bloodgood, in caring for everyone in the 2nd Mass, the group of survivors led by Tom Mason (Noah Wyle). I asked her about the conditions of the Season 2 shoot, which by all accounts was pretty grueling.

We were shooting at the worst time to go to Vancouver, October to February. It’s just beautiful, but it was cold… It was definitely more challenging. We were outside a lot more, we were changing locations pretty constantly. What our characters are experiencing, being uprooted and put somewhere the next day, we were feeling that too. I think that totally came across just naturally. (Laughs) That fog coming out of their mouths isn’t CGI.

When asked about her favorite episode of this second season, she said, “I think it’s 207 (airing July 22, “Molon Labe”). It’s really exciting. Lourdes and Anne get to put their hands in the action for a second, which is fun.”

Not surprisingly then, when I asked her what she would like to see happen for Lourdes if there’s a third season, she replied, “maybe it’s a selfish thing because I enjoy doing scenes like this so much, but to get on the battlefield for a second, because she stays back home with Anne. There’s tons of action that comes back to them but I think to get out into the field would be really cool.”

The hardest day of the season for her was one of the days in the mobile medical unit, aka the med bus, when the bus set was closed up:

We shot on that med bus, and when you have so many people in that med bus, the sound guys, the camera guys, the actors, the stunt people, stunt coordinators, they’re all standing there, and everyone’s tension and everyone’s energy is clashing against each other.

There was one scene where … Moon, Noah, and Maxim (Knight, who plays Tom Mason’s youngest son Matt) and I were all in the scene and it was all stunts, it had a lot of fluidity to it, and it had to end up in a certain place or else it all had to go over again. That was really challenging. We were trying to “improv” medically, but we didn’t want to interfere with the stunt, but then Noah, because he’s pretty seasoned with medical stuff (oh RIGHT)… We’re trying to stay out of the stunt people’s way but trying to do it.

It was just really challenging and I got pretty frustrated, but hopefully it turned out great… The bus opens up, but certain scenes where you travel through the entire scope of the bus and you’re supposed to be traveling, it’s gotta be closed up, so you’re just squishing past people and trying to just not see them.

Really good days could come from really sad scenes. “I really enjoyed working with this director Seith (Mann), it was actually that episode with the scene with the bus, he did a lot of takes, and he would have a lot of room for experimenting.”

Gabriel said that she hasn’t previewed any of the episodes before they air, partly because so much is done in post production. They’re told about how things are expected to look, but “we were shown how – like that little alien in Tom’s eye was going to look. I didn’t visualize it swimming around in his eye, I just thought it would be lodged in there, but when they made it swim around I was like ‘WHOA! That is COOL!’”

As for the atmosphere during a shoot, she laughs that “age is only a number on the Falling Skies set”:

We’re pretty goofy onset. It’s definitely grueling, the nights and the dirt and the cold, that stuff takes hours to shake out. (But) we’re pretty goofy on set, and least Moon and I are. When you put me and Moon and Maxim in a scene together it’s just ridiculous. Moon and I on our own, we just love to sing and dance. We were on this set underground and there was a chain link fence, and we were doing fake music videos, and Maxim gets all excited and starts telling jokes and we start feeding off that, it was just chaos.

Though sci-fi wasn’t really on her radar before, “being on Falling Skies has totally opened up the whole sci-fi world to me and I’m starting to really enjoy it. I went to Comic Con in London, the MCM Expo, and I met a bunch of people who are sci-fi fans, and it’s such a cool feeling, everyone’s so in to it. There’s a certain kind of suspense about it when you like something, you’re always waiting for the next thing that’s going to happen, it’s cool.”

In fact, she’ll be attending Comic-Con in San Diego this week for the first time.

I’m very excited but also kinda scared (laughing). What I love so much is the people who dress up. If I could do a panel dressed up, I completely would, and I probably could. In London there was a steampunk booth. On my breaks I would go over and I would hang out over there and I came back with a bowler hat and goggles with a clock in one of the eyes, and for the rest of the day when I was greeting fans it was wearing my steampunk gear. It was so much fun.

She’ll be on the panel for the anime Nickelodeon series The Legend of Korra, on which she voices the character of Asami Soto. I asked her how she likes doing voice work:

Voice work is cool. It was a challenge and it still is but it took me a while to get the hang of it and find that sweet spot. I was in Canada shooting Falling Skies for a lot of the recording so I did a lot of stuff by myself, but I so much more prefer being in the room with everybody else, which is what they do unless someone’s gone, because you run a whole scene together. It’s awesome because when you’re working with actors you bounce off of each other and lines come out different every time, and it’s so much nicer. You really just have to have images in your head, and really know the scenes well, so you know what you’re responding to and who you’re responding to.

I told her that I’d just started watching and am really enjoying it:

Yes it’s cool, it’s really interesting. I was just talking with someone else about it, how it looks, it’s got a futuristic kinda thing to it but it also has a very timed look about it and even sound about it; the jazz music is very cool. We just finished second season, and I have to say it ended on a note that looks pretty promising, so I’m hoping that we get into a third season.

But after Comic-Con, “I’m just chilling and working on music some more right now, I might do an indie film that my friend wrote, just kinda waiting for the head’s up on what happens with Falling Skies and just take it from there.”

Many thanks to Seychelle Gabriel for taking the time to talk with SciFi Mafia, she was a treat. I’m really hoping she’ll be wearing those steampunk goggles with the clock in the eye for her Legend of Korra panel. Or at least some Asami gloves.

Falling Skies Season 2, starring Noah Wyle, Moon Bloodgood, Will Patton, Drew Roy, and Seychelle Gabriel, airs Sundays at 9/8c on TNT.

The Legend of Korra Season 1 finale aired in June on Nickelodeon; check your local listings for encore presentations. No date has been announced yet for the premiere of Season 2.